Documentation of Stakeholder Committee Meeting (Apr 2024)

The first online meeting of the openIMIS Stakeholder Committee was attended by both institutional and individual committee members. Selected experts with long experience of working with openIMIS were also invited to join as observers. The meeting was facilitated by the openIMIS Coordination Desk team: Konstanze Lang; Saurav Bhattarai and Uwe Wahser.

Opening remarks were provided by Selina Baumberger, Programme Officer, Thematic Cooperation – Health at SDC, and by Alexander Schrade, Senior Policy Officer, Division Population Policy, Social Protection at BMZ. The speakers provided a comprehensive overview of the openIMIS journey, and reminded everyone of the strategic importance of digital development as an enabler of social protection and health - enabling more vulnerable people to access the protection they need, both in their every day lives and in times of crisis.

Part 1:

Konstanze Lang explained how the Stakeholder Committee fits into the wider openIMIS structure (see Fig. 1) and introduced the Committee members.

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Figure 1

She underlined the importance of strategic partnerships for the future growth of openIMIS. Key institutional partners working across different openIMIS domains, and represented at the meeting, include ILO, World Bank, ISSA, Swiss TPH and SolDevelo (overview of all members of the Stakeholder Committee)

Uwe Wahser and Saurav Bhattarai started with an update on the openIMIS Initiative, presenting a map that demonstrated its geographical spread: currently operating in 12 countries and covering nearly 18 million people through social protection and health financing schemes.

Next on the list was an overview of openIMIS modules and functionalities – showing how far the Initiative has come since it was created in 2016 and earliest implementation of the software in 2012. Today, the modular structure and broad range of functionalities enable a solutions-oriented approach that could be summarised as ‘selecting openIMIS modules based on what you already have and what is needed in a particular context’. In other words, openIMIS is highly adaptable and has potential beyond the social protection and health sectors.

A short question and answer session closed the first part of the meeting, with suggestions on the marketing of openIMIS to new implementers and users. Drawing on the experience in Cameroon where in 2023 openIMIS was recently adopted in 2023 as thea  solution to power the country’s UHC scheme, George Yuh Atohmbom pointed to the need to link openIMIS marketing to existing operational solutions as proof of concept – i.e., demonstrating that openIMIS works. Another suggestion was to market openIMIS using a more ‘conceptual’ approach such as, for example, how can openIMIS strengthen transparency, which could be a useful approach for strengthening governance.

Part 2:

In the second part of the meeting members discussed the format and contents of the openIMIS conference scheduled for later this year. The proposed timing is for the end of the year, following the October openIMIS release.

Suggestions for the format include the use of interactive tutorials and even the space for hands on experimentation (demo), in addition to presentations on latest developments of the initiative and software as well as a Q&A session.

When discussing conference topics, like sharing concrete implementation experiences and modalities as well as updates on latest functionalities (e.g. with respective to social registries), members emphasized to invite representatives from the countries to present on what concretely changed for them (for scheme management) after implementing / scaling up openIMIS. Another topic of interest to the members was assessed as relevant to a wider audience, i.e. to distinguish and clarify the relation between Digital Public Goods (DPGs) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Saurav Bhattarai highlighted the continuing lack of understanding about these terms, using openIMIS as an example of a ‘true DPG’ that can also serve as DPI. This compares with many smaller initiatives which, while they may use open-source software, the technical know-how is in the hands of one small (often private sector) organisation which ties users to this single vendor and eventually limits use. Countries for show-casing openIMIS as a DPG included Cameroon and Bangladesh.

Anong the topics for showcasing important aspects of openIMIS, the following stood out:

• The long experience – and further potential - of the openIMIS Initiative to develop local IT capacities.

• The clear business case for private sector organisations, based on openIMIS’ partnerships with both private sector startups and larger more established organisations.

• The ability of openIMIS to address the substantial fragmentation in social protection and health financing schemes and to align with national social systems.

There was also a reminder not to proceed too fast in presenting new material given that the meeting will also be attended this year by representatives of new constituencies such as NGOs. There were suggestions to hold bilateral meetings prior to the conference with the aim of introducing openIMIS to those not familiar with it, and giving a longer overview of the Initiative at the start of the conference.

The meeting wrapped up with a quick discussion on potential dates.